Category Archives: Consensus 2016

The OpenBazaar team has released its roadmap to the public via a Medium blog post and a picture of the company Trello board. The decentralized marketplace had “received a better than expected response,” and has gained visitors from all across the globe. With this, the company thought it would let the community know the upcoming development plans for the future.

“Today we’re releasing our high-level roadmap for OpenBazaar, — Our mission is to make trade free for everyone, everywhere. Our vision is for OpenBazaar to become Commerce 2.0: a permissionless and censorship-resistant protocol for global trade using Bitcoin.”

OpenBazaar’s 1-2 Year Roadmap

The developers of OpenBazaar say the roadmap goals are an “ambitious destination” that will likely take 1-2 years. The team tells the community the project is fully open source and users are invited to join the Slack group to help contribute. Additionally, they write the roadmap is called “high level” and some expansions include “important platforms such as mobile.” The outline detailed in the OpenBazaar blog says there constant ongoing commitments of which some are short term, medium, and long-term goals.

Some of the long-term achievements the team wants to tackle are improving the moderation system, reputation enhancement, listing flexibility, discovery search, and more privacy. The OpenBazaar developers intend to enable Tor and other privacy-centric features after additional development is added. OpenBazaar states, “Going forward, we will be upgrading the network backend to IPFS, which is discussed in greater detail below. This upgrade will be a significant step forward to eventually integrating Tor.” Short term deployments for the decentralized marketplace include:

Email notifications

Webhooks

Backups

Order management

Inventory management

Order process UI

Sales control center improvements

Advanced digital goods

Blockchain ID on-boarding

Some medium-term goals include “big ticket” items such as an Interplanetary File System (IPFS). The protocol is a hypermedia for building distributed file systems, and would be an extension to the OpenBazaar network architecture. This feature would act like BitTorrent says OpenBazaar and the developers say, “when you visit another user’s store, your node will download and begin seeding that store data to other users.” The new framework will benefit users a great deal with enhanced censorship resistance, persistent content, multi-transport, local connections, and improved DHT implementation.

Additionally, OpenBazaar developers want to add advanced messaging that are encrypted and sent in real-time. The team also wants to add a full featured Bitcoin wallet integrated into the platform. OpenBazaar says the goal is to help new Bitcoin users manage the cryptocurrency on the site. The decentralized marketplace blog states:

“OpenBazaar uses a basic BIP32 wallet to manage multisignature escrow transactions in a user-friendly way. Ultimately, we want to include a full featured wallet in the application. The goal here is to make it easier for users to manage their Bitcoin (especially those that are new to Bitcoin) and incur fewer bitcoin transaction fees when transferring funds out of the app.”

Lastly OpenBazaar says it will be fully compatible with off chain proposals such as the Lightning Network and Segregated Witness. The team also details it will be working on a mobile app noting that, “mobile is eating eCommerce like software is eating the world.” They plan to launch a client-only mobile application and hope that it “empowers users” to manage their node.

The decentralized marketplace has a lot of work to accomplish and many community members are supporting its future stake in the new economy. The company got a lot of honourable mentions at the recent CoinDesk Consensus 2016 event and completing a roadmap like this one will bring the team quite a few more.

What do you think about OpenBazaar’s roadmap? Let us know in the comments below.

On Tuesday at the Consensus Conference in New York City, Deloitte announced a number of partnerships with companies in the blockchain space to develop 20 ongoing blockchain initiatives and prototypes, thereby signaling a commitment towards becoming an early mover in blockchain consulting services.

Deloitte Making Big Industry Moves

The “Big 4” firm is scoping and leading development for blockchain-related solutions that span across digital identity, digital banking, cross-border payments, loyalty and rewards, investment management and insurance sectors. The timing of Deloitte’s announcement coincides with a rising interest and research from banks towards implementing blockchain technology. Given the emerging nature of these services, Deloitte is hoping to learn best practices quickly in hopes of generating increased revenue.

Speaking to the initiative, Joe Guastella, a principal with Deloitte Consulting and U.S. and global leader of the financial services practice, remarked, “Blockchain is proving to be a major disruptive force in financial services. The industry prototypes and pilots have shown this, and we continue to focus on helping our clients to make blockchain a reality for their businesses.”

An eye-catching component of Deloitte’s announcement is the partnerships with blockchain companies BlockCypher, Bloq, ConsenSys, Loyyal (formerly known as Ribbit.me) and the Stellar Development Foundation. Due to a steep learning curve and relative shortage of blockchain developers at Deloitte and beyond to meet the growing demand from clients, such partnerships with industry players are mutually beneficial and will shorten the timeframe towards the implementation of these projects for Deloitte’s clientele.

The traditional nature of Deloitte’s client base means that the solutions being developed are not specifically limited to blockchains. Rather, blockchain equivalents such as permissioned or private blockchains appear to be on the forefront of development efforts. For example, the Press Release claims “BlockCypher’s platform runs Ethereum, Bitcoin and custom private chains at-scale.” Additionally, “Deloitte and Bloq are working together to deliver blockchain-enabled technology designed to improve integrity and security, and reduce costs in the $1.1 trillion insurance industry.” With strict regulatory requirements around the banking, investment, and insurance spaces, fully public and open blockchains are not in alignment with the regulatory frameworks, data accessibility, and consumer protection goals. Therefore alternative, privatized solutions are being developed.

Work seems to be ongoing with clients outside of the United States, too. This is encouraging as globally spanning projects leverage the global nature inherent within blockchain technology. Remarking on the partnerships, Mr. Guastella added, “These five blockchain companies are collaborating with Deloitte’s teams not just in the U.S., but across key geographies as well. Each complements our deep industry experience and, together, we are harvesting the benefits of blockchain technologies — developing new revenue models, improving cost efficiencies and creating innovative solutions across the globe.”

With PWC’s recent announcement of a Blockchain Practice in Northern Ireland, Accenture’s partnership with Digital Asset Holdings, and EY’s partnership with the Post-Trade Distributed Ledger (PTDL) Group, interest from professional services firms in expanding revenues by offering blockchain related services is rising quickly. As traditional players look to implement solutions, the services provided by professional services firms will likely prove invaluable towards advancing initiatives in the space. In Deloitte’s case, their ability to bridge traditionally oriented clients with blockchain-focused startups is a unique value proposition. Whether or not the private solutions are truly a “blockchain” remains to be seen as projects are completed and technical details are made public.

What are your thoughts on Deloitte’s announcement? Will more professional services firms open a blockchain practice in coming months or years? Share your thoughts below!